‘Two Words: Public Relations’ – Vince McMahon on Why WWE Underwrites Drug Rehab for Ex-Wrestlers
January 9, 2010‘The Question’ – Senate Candidate Linda McMahon (Still) Can’t Answer It (complete 7-part series as a single post)
January 10, 2010
The ABC evening news had a Linda McMahon feature tonight, and there wasn’t much to it. The story had the predictable splicing together of World Wrestling Entertainment TV clips involving Linda, the same talk about her ability to spend “whatever it takes” to win the U.S. Senate seat in Connecticut. Asked what would be the first piece of legislation she would sponsor in Washington, McMahon mumbled something about a bill to “incentivize small business.”
ABC left untouched, at least for now, the story of the death pandemic in the pro wrestling industry on the McMahon family’s watch, and whether Linda’s tenure as CEO of WWE had helped “incentivize” appalling occupational health and safety standards.
The ABC website text backgrounder, at http://abcnews.go.com/WN/linda-mcmahon-spend-50-million-bid-connecticut-senate/story?id=9521041, does a little better. There, according to the story co-bylined by on-air correspondent Kate Snow and producers Susan Kriskey and Joel Siegel, McMahon “acknowledged that ‘it took a while to get into focusing on all these particular issues’ involving the health of the WWE’s wrestlers.”
She added: “As our company has grown and as we have matured and are able to do more and more things, we’re much more in tune, much more sensitive, to taking care of these men and women.”
On this blog tomorrow, I will run, as a single post, the complete text of the seven-part series this week, “Linda McMahon Has No Good Answer to This Question.”
Irv Muchnick
1 Comment
[…] The segment was promoted with a straighter text story — probably written by producer Joel Siegel, on the ABC News website. There McMahon was quoted, albeit cursorily and perfunctorily, on the obvious question of what was daintily referred to as “all these health issues” of pro wrestlers. What a polite way to avoid mentioning directly that the talent in the industry McMahon’s company dominates have dropped dead in amazing numbers. Still, this was better than nothing. (See “ABC News’ First Pass at Linda McMahon Coverage Is a Dud,” http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2010/01/09/abc-news-first-pass-at-linda-mcmahon-piece-is-a-dud… […]